Op-Ed: Censorship in Bromley Libraries

London
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Residents of the London Borough of Bromley who try to log on to certain websites in their local libraries are greeted with an access denied message.

In this article you will see a number of screengrabs. These are the messages I received when I attempted to log on to certain websites in my local library, Penge, of Penge Festival fame.

While the appalling behaviour of Abraham Foxman and his gang deserves only our contempt, it is certainly arguable that public libraries should be able to block certain sites, if only because they are used by children, and notwithstanding that saying of Chris Tame: when they talk about protecting your children, what they really mean is destroying your rights.

Blocking sites is a hit and miss affair though, and sometimes the censors go way over the top. Many years ago, when libraries first started offering public Internet access I was unable to perform a Google image search in a Lewisham library. I was told by the librarian that this has somehow been disabled to prevent children from accessing pornography. The mind boggles. There are though some sites children should most definitely NOT be able to access. Like this one:

If you haven't head the acronym NAMBLA, it stands for North American Man Boy Love Association, and no, it is not a support group for divorced fathers. The acronym is spelt NAMbLA in the group's logo. If you want to learn anymore about it, run the name through Google, suffice it to say that even most mainstream homosexual organisations won't have anything to do with it.

The next site, below, is run by Harold Covington, Wicked Harold to his friends, well, to me actually. Harold is the self-styled Nazi who wants to withdraw American troops from the Middle East, scale down the Federal Government and abolish both ID cards and driving licences. While that probably wouldn't have gone down too well with the real Nazis, Harold's views on blacks and especially Jews rightly earn him the epithet race-hater, so most people would agree that he should not be allowed to spread his gospel on local government networks.

The same can probably be said for the so-called Jewish Defense League, below. The JDL's idea of defense is to strike first against its enemies in case they might be anti-Semites, which is of course a great way to make friends. Not. It is so far off the wall that even the aforementioned Abraham Foxman won't touch it with a barge pole.

While most reasonable people would not object to the JDL being banned from their local library in addition to Harold Covington, the Michigan Militia, below, seems slightly out of place in this list. Okay, they like dressing up, walking through the woods with guns and posing for the camera, but are they really any sort of hate or militant group? Militant in the sense of preparing to march on Washington and seize the Capitol?

Next on the list is the Adelaide Institute, below. While the guy who runs it has been taken in by the 9/11 Truthers, the Adelaide Institute is an academic organisation that carries out historical research. Let us say no more than that here.

Next, below, is Green Anarchy. This site does not appear to have been updated since January. Perhaps the people who run it are in prison? Back in the 1990s, there was a trial of the people who produced Green Anarchist magazine. The aforementioned Chris Tame believed these people - Deep Greens - are a menace to mankind. It remains to be seen though if they are a menace to library users.

Finally on the banned list is Notes From The Borderland, or perhaps that should be notes from a boring man? Apparently, Larry O'Hara wrote his PhD dissertation on anti-fascism in the 1970s and 80s. I must remember not to read it sometime.

Larry will probably not be too surprised that a self-styled radical like himself is banned by my local library, but he'll probably be a bit miffed that while he is, Nick Griffin and his British National Party haven't been, see below.

This is the homepage for the BNP; you can tell that because of the prominent donate button, a standing joke in certain right wing circles, along with Nick himself since his discovery that Islam is the root of all evil, a view apparently shared by apostate Nonie Darwish.

The final screengrab was not taken in Penge Library but from a computer in a local Internet caff. It is from the 12160 website, from which I have recently been banned. Whether or not it can be accessed from Bromley Libraries, there are better ways of fighting the New World Order than subscribing to its increasingly outlandish drivel.